The Tribe Has Spoken

Survivor brought together two unlikely friends, and millions of viewers during its first season

In the summer of 2000, a new show hit the airwaves. Many said it would never work, it just didn’t make sense. I mean, who would watch a bunch of strangers hang out on a beach for nearly 6 weeks? Apparently a lot of people, because the finale of Survivor: Borneo received 51.7 million viewers.

Survivor was the first corner stone in the pantheon that is now CBS Reality Game Programming that now also features Big Brother and The Amazing Race. All three of these shows are still going strong (for the most part). Survivor is entering it’s 30th season in February to the surprise of most people. I know this by the amount of times people ask me ‘is that really still on’ when I tell them I love Survivor.

Big Brother winner and Amazing Race contestant, Rachel Reilly, has not been the only CBS reality star to make the show crossover

As Survivor inspired the reality television renaissance, it also inspired my own. I vividly remember watching it when I was younger, but fell out of it sometime after Survivor: All-Stars. I came back into it right near the end of Survivor: Niacaragua when my brother more or less forced me into watching the finale with him. That started a 5-month long spiral where I watched all the seasons. All 22 at that point.

Survivor: Amazon’s Rob Cesternino and myself!

Survivor brought me back into a number of other reality shows including Big Brother, The Bachelor, and all those fringe shows that only lasted one season. These shows go a level deeper than most other reality shows, there is an element of strategy and the social game is often most important.

That’s why I love these kinds of shows, I love seeing how people from all walks of life interact when completely taken out of their comfort zone, and fight their way to a large sum of money (that will then be cut in half due to taxes. learn from Hatch, pay for taxes). Even after so many seasons, a hundred different twists, dozens of countries, and over 300 survivors, that aspect never changes, and that’s what keeps me tuning in after all these years.